Anyone who studies history knows that the best thing about it is that it is constantly changing; new documents become available, new events come to light, and former employees, albeit disgraced ones, emerge from the woodwork to tell the truth behind presidential policies of days past. Such is the case of John Ehrlichman, a former aide to Nixon, and an integral cog in the Watergate machine.
Earlier this week, it was made public that Ehrlichman, apparently feeling no loyalty to the administration that cost him 18 months in jail, made a comment to a reporter back in 1994 about the real motivation behind Nixon’s War on Drugs:
“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”
In essence, Ehrlichman confirmed what a number of individuals in these groups already knew: racial targeting of the Drug War wasn’t a coincidental side effect; it was the intended effect. Looking at the stats of drug-related incarcerations, the Nixon mission of racial targeting was achieved- no celebration necessary.
Mass incarceration is endemic in the United States. To put the numbers in perspective, the United States has only 5% of the world’s population but accounts for 25% of imprisoned people worldwide. Racist drug law enforcement fuels mass incarceration rates by targeting groups like African Americans and Hispanics, who together comprised 58% of all prisoners in 2008, despite only making one-quarter of the US population. Do these people have a natural tendency towards crime? Are they born to be drug offenders?
Obviously, no. It is perhaps the most naïve understanding of racial relations that would lead an individual to believe that race alone determines drug use; however, it is clear that race greatly contributes to the repercussions that arise from drug use. Politicians, law enforcement, and average members of society alike continue to cite skewed statistics of incarceration rates to perpetuate the myth that an inherent flaw in African Americans lands them in jails at nearly six times the rate of White people. The enforcement of drug laws, not the demographic persecuted, is to blame for the stats.
Looking back, Nixon started the racially targeted war, but Reagan and his supporters doubled down on its policies. Granted, the Reagan administration isn’t exactly known for its grace in dealing with issues not related to the Christian Right- one look at his dealing with the AIDS epidemic could show us that- however, looking at the statistics of black incarceration under his administration, it's hard to deny that policy enforcement was racially motivated.
Today, the numbers of drug incarceration rates are astounding: 5 times as many Whites are using drugs as African Americans, yet African Americans are sent to prison for drug offenses at 10 times the rate of Whites. Additionally, African Americans serve comparable sentences for nonviolent drug offense to Whites who are violent offenders. Clearly, the racially motivated policy implementation has worked, but when will the prison industrial complex end?
"Tough on crime, tough on drugs;" that was the slogan of decade's past of white politicians, but does it ring true? War declared on inanimate objects is doomed from the start, the idea itself is laughable, but dooming an entire demographic to incarceration and targeting by the system? No one can laugh at that.
